Missing jet reveals uncomfortable Malaysian truths

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — It's
apparently a challenge to find people satisfied with the Malaysian
government's performance
in its search for Flight 370: A mainstream daily newspaper here
ran a story Monday on praise being lavished by an anonymous
Facebook user from Sweden.

The mysterious disappearance of a Boeing 777 with 239 people aboard would test any government, but Malaysia's is particularly
strained because its elite are accustomed to getting an easy ride. Decades in power and a pliant media have cushioned them
from scrutiny.

Its civilian and military leaders have
struggled to provide answers from Day One of the crisis, when it took
several hours
to even declare the plane missing. They said early on that the
plane may have doubled back, but took days to say it was military
radar that suggested that and days more to confirm it.

In response to criticism, government officials have repeatedly said they must wait to confirm information before they can
release it. But that has not prevented them from making mistakes.

On Monday, the defense minister said police
visited the homes of the jet's two pilots soon after the March 8
disappearance,
contradicting the country's police chief, who had said officers
did not go there until a week later. The minister also raised
doubts about earlier reports from Malaysian officials that a key
data communications system had been turned off before the
cockpit spoke to air-traffic controllers — a detail that has
increased speculation that the pilots were responsible.

China, where most of the passengers are from, has been especially dismayed that it took a week for Malaysia to come up with
details on the plane's possible location. The official Xinhua News Agency said the delay "smacks of either dereliction of
duty or reluctance to share information."

Passengers' relatives, holed up in hotels in Kuala Lumpur and Beijing and desperate for word, have picked up on rumors and
false leads in the media before the government has, adding to their anguish.

Asked on Monday by a foreign reporter about
the criticism, Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said it
was baseless.
"I have got a lot of feedback saying we have been very responsible
in our actions," said Hishammuddin, the main face of the
government's response to the crisis. "It's very irresponsible of
you to say that."

The disappearance of the jet touches on
issues that officials normally wouldn't discuss publicly. The incident
now appears
certain to be a security failure at some level of the government,
and has raised questions about the national airline and
the defense readiness of the air force, which was unable to
quickly spot a jetliner in Malaysian airspace and off its flight
path. The possibility of Islamist militant involvement is also
highly sensitive in the multiethnic country.

"In Malaysian political culture, they are
not used to answering questions straight and honestly," said Bridget
Welsh, a political
scientist from the Singapore Management University. "They are used
to 'government knows best for government,' and have been
very slow in realizing this is not a Malaysia crisis — this has
global effects."

Malaysia has enjoyed rapid economic growth
since it gained independence from Britain more than half a century ago.
Although
nominally a democracy, the same ruling coalition has been in power
for more than five decades, helped by gerrymandering and
affirmative action policies that have won the support of the
ethnic Malay majority.

But in recent years the government's grip on power has weakened; the ruling coalition didn't win the popular vote for the
first time in elections last year, though it managed to hold on to power. The plane disappeared the morning after a court
convicted opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim of sodomy, a verdict widely seen as politically motivated. It has since emerged
that the pilot was a supporter of Anwar, though that has not been widely reported in government media.

Greg Barton, a Southeast Asia expert at Australia's Monash University, said the country has a tradition of distrusting the
West, a "third worldism" political philosophy that was a legacy of the pugnacious rule of former Malaysian Prime Minister
Mohamad Mahathir.

"There is a natural instinct not to ask for too much Western help," he said. "It's made it hard for the government to move
quickly."

Malaysian officials have said they are working with foreign experts and countries, including the sharing of sensitive radar
and satellite data.

Apart from online news portals, the print and television media in Malaysia are unabashedly pro-government.

"Stop bashing SAR (search and rescue) efforts, says Swede FB user," read the headline in the mass circulation New Straits
Times, which went on to quote at length from the Facebook page of the anonymous Swede defending the government.

"Can you imagine the burden they (the government) carry on their shoulders and how much precaution they have to take before
announcing anything?" the Swede was quoted as posting on his account. "No. Because you are not in their shoes."

The government said soon after the jet
disappeared that there were indications it might have turned back from
its last known
position over the South China Sea after it stopped communicating
with the ground, but didn't fully explain why. It took a
week for it to confirm that military radar data had confirmed the
plane had flown over the country and then north toward the
Indian Ocean.

"There is a bit of haziness there," said
Ibrahim Suffian, the head of the Merdeka Center, a Malaysian political
research institute.

Like several others, Ibrahim said he thought the government's media management had improved in recent days, perhaps because
they had contracted a crisis management company to advise them.

The fact that the air force didn't
apparently spot or react to the jet flying across its airspace has
brought the military
unusual scrutiny. Some aviation analysts have said authorities
were slow in tracing the plane, in shifting the search area
from the South China Sea, and in investigating the pilots'
background. Suspicion has fallen on the pilots, although Malaysian
officials have said they are looking into everyone aboard the
flight.

"I think they were a bit tardy in getting
onto it," said aviation expert Tom Ballantyne. "It may be the pilot was
very experienced,
he was obviously highly respected, perhaps they thought it was out
of the question (that he might be involved.) Certainly,
his home and that of the co-pilot should have been part of the
initial investigation."